Multiple University Buildings Suffer Water Damage

Due to the cold temperatures over winter break, there were damages to three Benedictine University academic buildings: Scholl Hall, Kindlon Hall and Birck Hall.

“I am writing to notify you of water damage that occurred at Birck Hall today, 1/3/2018,” said Marlene M. Levine, Facilities Management and Planning executive director, in an email to staff, “The damage is limited to the East Stairwell corridor and a number of adjacent spaces”

Repairs were done to Birck within the hour to fix the water damage.The rupture to the hot water system was a result of the extreme temperatures that the University saw during break. The night of January 2nd, there was a low temperature in Lisle of -14॰ํF. This day set a record for the coldest January 2nd in history. The hot water system runs between Kindlon and Birck building. However, the majority of the repairs occurred in Birck Hall.

The damages in Scholl Hall were more recent, having occurred the day before classes started for the Spring semester.

“The issue in Scholl Hall was the result of a faulty valve and has been repaired,” said Ms. Levine via email.

Professor Chris Birks, Communication Arts associate professor (and Candor advisor), was one of the professors who suffered most of the damage in Scholl.

“The biggest problem was the amount of steam that was in my office. From what I’m told it was a hot water pipe that broke,” said Birks. “The steam itself filled my office and so I lost a lot of textbooks and things like that.”

There was very little that could be done to have prevented these incidents, however Benedictine facilities and emergency repair did the best they could and responded quickly.

“Again, our professional clean-up partners were called to campus within an hour of the incident and repairs are underway. Oftentimes these types of incidents cannot be prevented and it is just coincidence that we are repairing concurrently in three buildings” said Levine.